Speakers

WIPTTE 2015 with have exciting keynotes highlighting the value of pen and touch interaction. One keynote will be held jointly with the Global Educator Exchange (E2) event being held close by.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers for WIPTTE 2015

Sharon OviattPresident and Director
Incaa Designs Nonprofit

Sharon Oviatt is internationally known for her multidisciplinary work on human-centered interfaces, educational interfaces, multimodal and mobile interfaces, pen and speech interfaces, and technology design and evaluation. She has published over 150 scientific articles in a wide range of venues. She is an Associate Editor of the main journals and edited book collections in the field of human-centered interfaces, including the journals Human Computer Interaction and ACM Transactions on Intelligent Interactive Systems. She has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award for pioneering research on mobile multimodal interfaces. She also was recipient of the inaugural ICMI Sustained Accomplishment Award for innovative, long-lasting, and influential contributions to defining the field of multimodal and multimedia interaction, interfaces, and system development.

Sharon currently serves as President and Director of Incaa Designs Nonprofit. She originally received her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Toronto. For most of her career, she has served as a professor of Computer Science, but she has also been a faculty member and taught in Psychology and Linguistics departments. In 2013, Sharon published The Design of Future Educational Interfaces (Routledge). Her latest book, The Paradigm Shift to Multimodality in Contemporary Computer Interfaces (co-authored with Phil Cohen) will be published in 2015.

Computer Interfaces Can Stimulate or Undermine Students’ Ability to Think

Computer input capabilities, such as a keyboard or pen, substantially influence basic cognitive abilities, including our ability to produce appropriate ideas, solve problems correctly, and make accurate inferences about information. Compared with keyboard interfaces, computer input tools that can express information involving different representations, modalities, and linguistic codes— or expressively powerful interfaces— can directly stimulate human thought and performance. In this talk, I’ll summarize how and why the quality of a computer interface matters. I’ll also discuss implications for establishing a new generation of digital tools that are far better at supporting our thinking and reasoning, with special implications for designing more effective educational technologies.

Pam MuellerSocial Psychology Researcher
Princeton University

Pam Mueller is a graduate student at Princeton University, and will complete her Ph.D. in social psychology in June. She received her B.S. in psychology from Loyola University Chicago in 2002, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2008. Prior to law school, she worked as a press secretary for Howard Dean's presidential campaign and on Capitol Hill. Before entering graduate school, she practiced trademark, copyright, and false advertising law.

She has published on a wide range of topics, from perceptions of knowledge and intentionality in legal cases to potential issues with the use of crowdsourcing websites for experimental data collection. Her research on laptop and longhand note taking was covered by many media outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, the BBC, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard

Prior studies have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking as a result of students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. Our research suggests that even when laptops are disconnected from the Internet and used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse, particularly on on conceptual questions, than students who took notes longhand. While taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.

Anthony Salcito Vice President, Worldwide Education, Microsoft Corporation
As vice president of education for the Microsoft Worldwide Education organization, Anthony Salcito works with education institutions and partners globally to embrace technology to optimize learning environments and student achievement.
In this role, Anthony oversees the worldwide execution of the Microsoft vision for education and its partnership and technology outreach efforts via the Worldwide Partners in Learning, Shape the Future, and Public and Private Partnerships programs. Anthony joined Microsoft in 1992, eventually rising to be general manager of education in the United States, where he helped launch the Partners in Learning program in 2003. He moved to his current role in 2009.

Richard AndersonProfessor of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington

Richard Anderson has been a researcher in educational technology for almost 20 years, working on a wide range of topics including Tutored Video Instruction, Interactive Classrooms, Presentation Technologies, and Community Video Education. He is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Washington, where he has been on the faculty since 1986 and has been recognized as an innovator in education. In 2001, while working as a sabbatical researcher at Microsoft Research in a distributed classroom project, he recognized the potential of the still under development TabletPC to transform classroom instruction by giving instructors more flexible options for presentation and providing a platform integrating student devices into an electronic classroom, which led to the development of Classroom Presenter. In recent year’s Dr. Anderson has focused his work on the application of computing technologies in low resource environments, with an emphasis on applications to global health. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BA in Mathematics from Reed College.

Reflections on Classroom Presenter

Classroom Presenter is a TabletPC application developed to allow instructors to give more flexible presentations through the introduction of digital ink. The application achieved wide spread use by early adopters of the Tablet PC, and continues to be used in classrooms around the world. This talk will describe the history of Classroom Presenter, and reflect on how the initial vision of Classroom Presenter could be realized today.

Jeff
HanGeneral Manager
Perceptive Pixel / Surface Hub
Microsoft

Jeff Han is one of the main developers of multi-touch sensing, on which he worked as a research scientist at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He founded Perceptive Pixel in 2006 to produce large multi-touch displays, and has demonstrated the potential for this technology in several well-received TED talks. He is presently General Manager of Perceptive Pixel / Surface Hub at Microsoft.

Previous Keynote Speakers for WIPTTE 2014

Barbara Tversky
Professor of Psychology and Education,
Columbia University